Children enjoy playing sports or sports-related games. Some games may be designed to be suited for particular age groups while others incorporate various design elements that enable the games to become more challenging as the child develops. In addition to be a fun activity, playing games assists in the development of a child's coordination skills, such as vision, depth perception, aim, and hand/eye coordination.
Often however, sports-related games are large and not portable and difficult to store. For example, there are air hockey tables, nok-hockey boards and the like which are rigid structures and impractical to be easily moved from one location to another.
Some game tables are portable. One such example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,634,646 (Wolpert et al.) which describes a portable game table having a protective outer surface when in the closed position. The portable game table includes a game table having an outer surface and a case configured to attach to the game table. A portion of the outer surface of the game table includes a portion of the protective outer surface. The game table may be configured to have a game played thereon, such as football, billiards and air hockey. Another example of a game table is U.S. Pat. No. 7,156,396 (Voden) which has a plurality of table top portions interconnected with at least one hinge and movable between an extended position and a folded position. At least one rail is configured to be removably mounted to the plurality of table top portions and configured to removably secure at least one game template to the plurality of table top portions. However, these portable game tables are still bulky and difficult to carry.
The inventor has recognized these problems with prior art portable game tables and deems it to be beneficial to provide apparatus having a preferably smooth playing surface for playing sports-related games that are portable and foldable or collapsible and can easily be moved from one location to another and set up and each location as desired by the players, and moreover can be stored in the folded or collapsed configuration.